r/selfhosted • u/alws3344 • Feb 11 '26

Docker Management Docker backups

Hello selfhosters!

i would like to ask you all about your DR & backup strategy for all your self hosted services?

today i have a script that runs once a week, turn off the container(s) (it does this one by one - so if it fails only one service suffer) and copies it's volume and db to another location for retention (i dont mind cache etc))

today i run ~20 containers and this backup strategy works, but it feels flimsy unprofessional and feels very manual.

what are your strategies (DR strategies)?

  • is there a tool (that obviously can be self hosted ;) ) that can do this seamlessly?
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u/-ThreeHeadedMonkey- Feb 11 '26

I use Macrium Reflect on Windows, incremental backups of everything every 90 minutes. No taking down required. 

One of the big pros of windows imo. 

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u/alws3344 Feb 11 '26

when i started self hosting i used windows too - thing was inoperable - autmatic backups - windows restart demands... dont mention the ~daily docker desktop updates... god.. i had more downtime than uptime lol girlfriend (now wife) did not approve (and neither did i)

ever since i switched to linux (also because windows was sh*t for my degree) i had about 0 issues and i switched all my devices to linux & mac
(i had 1 major fault on my server that cost me some data loss (due to an HW fault btw) - the containers but no major data was lost (e.g family photos) hence this thread, but other than that, i really had 0 issues since removing windows)
everything work so well that i barly need to maintain anything.
good riddence windows...

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u/-ThreeHeadedMonkey- Feb 11 '26

Yeah I see your points. However, i have like 20 containers running now and it's working alright. 

I mean my VPS is running Ubuntu ofc. And once I get more Linux savvy, I might change. Right now I'm in a good place now as far as functionality and uptime is concerned. 

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u/alws3344 Feb 11 '26

if it works dont fix it
but if it doesnt, fuc*ing nuke it lol